by Stop Mike Lupica on September 26 at 11:47AM
This is the state of the football today: fans get more worked about dog-fighting than about the health of the players they supposedly care about.
Listen, I'm not going to shed too many tears for professional athletes who get paid really well. But there is something about football players that makes me sad. Maybe it's because the NFL treats the vast majority of them like they are nothing more than expendable parts. Actually, it's because they are, in fact, expendable... the lack of guaranteed contracts ensures that, no matter what.
And maybe it's because watching old former players... not the ones on TV, the former stars, but the real players, the ones who have disjointed fingers, the ones who walk with a limp, the ones whose health are so bad that you would think they are in their 70's, not 40's... watching them just makes me wonder if they would do it all again. Maybe they would. Or maybe they would just take a nice 9 to 5 job, trade back the money and the good times, and relish the chance to have spent more time with their children, and more time walking and running like a normal person.
I don't know if that's the case, and I don't know if I should feel bad for them. But I kinda do. Because no one is looking out for them.
Wayne Chrebet, fan favorite of Jets fans. I'm one of those fans who admired Chrebet. He's a guy who walked on to a professional team, and became one of their best receivers ever. He's Invincible, but with a career worthy of having his number retired. And you want to know what his biggest fear is? As he told Kevin Mahanan of Jets Football:
"That's my biggest fear," he says. "I know what I want to say, but I'm afraid I won't be able to remember it. My memory isn't very good. I could write it down, but I don't want to go up there and just read something. I want it to be from the heart, but I want to remember it, too.
Chrebet's entire career can be summed up by the last play of his career. I forget the details of the game - was it at the end of last season, or at the end of the 2005 season? He had become little more than a fourth receiver by that point, but on this play he did what he's suppose to do, what he's done his entire Jet career. He went over the middle on a slant pattern, on third down. The QB (I don't think it was Pennington... I think it was Brooks Bollinger) hit him, and he got the first down. He also got hammered by the opposing cornerback. Badly.
As soon as he was hit, I knew he had a concussion. This is a guy who had at least five concussion by this point, and we (the fans) all knew he was one concussion away from retirement. So there he is, getting hammered, head snapping back. Concussions are like ankle sprains... they become more common once you've had one or two of them. In fact, that's really what they are... a sprain... of your brain. A brain sprain.
The replays confirmed it, even though I didn't need anymore proof. You could literally see Chrebet's eyes roll back into his head on the replay, as he lost consciousness. And what's his life like now:
"Chrebet hopes the temporarily unshakable sadness won't hold him hostage"
"I have good days and bad days," Chrebet says. "A bad day is when you can't get out of bed and there's this dark cloud hanging over your head.
That sounds like a sign of depression. Dark clouds?
Chrebet suffers from the usual symptons of multiple concussions - specifically bad memory. He sounds like every other ex-NFL who retired because of concussions. He has trouble finding his car keys (check), trouble remembering names (check), trouble reading because he can't concentrate (check). I've read about these guys more times than I can count. I could have written an article about Chrebet, right down to the quotes, without even speaking to the guy.
But there's something alarming about this article. It's the latest thing we are finding out about concussions... it's the depression, the dementia. The possible violent ending in his future. That's the dark cloud.
It's the cloud that possibly took control of Chris Benoit on that day he violently end his, and his family's, lives. The cloud that may have caused Andre Waters to kill himself.
The Manahan piece ends on an upbeat note, because that's what Chrebet asked him to do. That's fine. My piece won't end on an upbeat. My piece isn't about Chrebet. It's about all of them. It's about this post I wrote three days before Manahan's piece, detailing the work of the Sports Legacy Institute.
It's a topic that is getting more and more press. Slate did a piece hypothesizing about OJ Simpson and whether concussions are to blame for his erratic behavior the day after this Chrebet piece came out.
You saw Jon Kitna a couple of weeks ago? He suffered a concussion early in the game, yet went back out there later on in the same game. When a player suffers a broken bone, they won't let him back into a game until he's healed. But what happens when he suffers a broken brain?
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I know Chrebet doesn't want pity, but I can't help but feel sorry for him, too.
The same thing happened to another ex-Jet, Al Toon. Somebody did a piece on him a while back and he was suffering from depression and suicidal thoughts. Sad.